Under the last princes of the Stuart name, the danger was great, but still it was only the royal person that formed the stay and strength of the Romish priesthood; whereas now, the sanctuary of safety, the very citadel of freedom, the Commons' House of Parliament, has been won, and for years has been occupied, by the enemy. I doubt not that all the factions acting there have committed errors. I speak not generally of their merits; but one of them rallies round the Protestant banner, supports every measure calculated for its protection, and resists every effort made against it. Their opponents persist in propagating the miserable delusion, that Popery is merely a harmless system of speculative religious faith. Refusing to look into its dangerous character, they have held office by consenting to do the work of the Popish priesthood, who in return support them by the votes of their delegates, combined with the votes of Scotsmen elected by the popular voice. Yes, you—Church-going men of Scotland, and you, Dissenters of whatever name—Seceders, Anti-burghers, Burghers, Baptists, Synod of Relief, Independents, Voluntaries—all pretended Protestants, like the inhabitants of Jerusalem when doomed to destruction, ye contend against each other, while the common enemy is demolishing or undermining all your bulwarks. You sent, and have persisted in sending, to the national councils men ignorant of the practical value of the Protestant faith as a protection to the morals, prosperity, intelligence, and liberties of a nation. For place and profit they have sacrificed those interests for which our fathers banished the nearest branch of the hereditary line of their ancient princes. Could James II. (VII. of Scotland) now look up from his grave in a foreign land, he might well ask why he was expelled from the British throne. A prince was lent to us by the Protestant people of Holland, and thereafter a successor was called from Hanover because he was a Protestant. This character of Protestant formed his title, and forms that of his successor to the British throne. But it is a title which Papists must regard with abhorrence, and which cannot be safe, and is not safe, under Popish domination. And this state of things is the result of a combination of Scotsmen—of Protestant Scotsmen with Papists—of elections made under the Reform Act of William IV. Assuredly this result was not foreseen in Scotland. On the contrary, one of the reasons assigned for the outcry in favour of the Reform Bill, was the apparent disregard with which our petitions were treated in 1828, when the King's Ministers gave way to the persevering urgency with which men calling themselves Whigs had for thirty years pleaded the cause of Popery. An opinion, thereupon, widely gained credit in Scotland, that the House of Commons neither had any sympathy with the opinions of the people, nor consisted of persons possessed of political or historical knowledge, or sound Protestant principles of religion and liberty; and that a more popular system of election would fill that house with wiser and better men. Countenanced by such an argument, the popular ambition bebecame irresistibly inflamed, and held odious all by whom it was opposed. You became greedy of privilege, but which of you reflected deeply on the duties and the high responsibility that privilege imposes. If, when told that your votes would send adherents of Popery into Parliament—that you would act as enemies of religion and liberty, and so violate the most sacred rules of duty as Protestants—each of you would presumptuously have retorted, "Is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" Yet, like Hazael, you committed the act; and thus the first effect of the Reform Bill was, that it brought guilt into the bowels of the land. The public crime no longer lay with the nobles and the gentry. You, the mass of householders in great towns, and village proprietors in the country, became the known and effectual enemies of the Protestant faith, and of the liberties of your country. For what Popish nation has ever enjoyed liberty? Where has liberty endured, or even existed, beyond the limits of a Protestant country? We have seen an ardent people (the French) bravely contend for it—shed for it their blood like water—slay one monarch and banish another; but all in vain. They were Papists or they were infidels; and hence the same physical events that in Protestant Britain produced ages of prosperity, liberty, and glory, served only among Papists and Infidels to drown their
